Word: orbited
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nose of a Delta rocket, one of the simplest satellites ever built by the U.S. roared off the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base last week to begin an 8 million-year journey in space. The 2-ft. sphere, placed into a 3,600-mile-high circular orbit, contains no moving parts or electronic equipment and resembles an oversized golf ball. Yet it should provide earthbound geophysicists with a benchmark in the sky that will enable them to measure precisely the rotation rate of the earth and the wobble of its axis, continental drift, and the movement along geologic...
...satellite's weight. Because it is so small yet has so much mass, LAGEOS will not be much affected by any traces of the earth's atmosphere, particles in the solar wind, or variations in the earth's gravity field. As a result, its orbit will be extremely stable, and its position at any time can be precisely determined...
Because LAGEOS is expected to remain in orbit for so long, NASA has placed aboard it two stainless-steel sheets, each etched with a message conceived by Astrophysicist Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Designed to inform extraterrestrial visitors or future inhabitants of the earth about the LAGEOS mission, the message shows three maps of the earth, depicting the continental drift that the satellite will help observe. The uppermost of the maps shows the continents as they are thought to have existed 225 million years ago, when Africa and South America were joined. The middle map is a picture...
...many East Europeans are persuaded that he played a decisive part. Grechko apparently argued that Czech Party Chief Alexander Dubček's political liberalization program was unacceptable from Moscow's point of view and that only a military intervention would keep the country in the Communist orbit. Even today the bullet-riddled façade of Prague's National Museum is known among Czechs as a "fresco à la Grechko...
...This is the coup de grace," he continues, pushing more buttons. "Have you ever played Tanks at the 24 Rest? Well, this is better. It's called Space War. You have a satellite, and I have a satellite. Now you're in orbit". he says, pointing at the screen, on which two objects are rotating about a dot. "You can change your orbit by firing your engines, like this." Blips emerge from the back of one satellite and it starts to describe an ellipse. "Then you have torpedoes." He turns his spaceship, fires an arrow-shaped blip and the other...